Reds Like Blood and Blues Like Sky
by Trompet
Summary: College AU. Mordred has long been cynical and broken, with nobody but his cat Druid to care for him, and he's accepted that the artist with the smiles like starlight is way, way, WAY out of his league. That doesn't mean he can't still manage to botch all possible chances anyway. Morlin, hints of other pairs. Alternates between silly and angst-ridden. You've been warned.
1. Ice-Blue Anger

This is my first Merlin fanfic and it shall be updated every Monday, fate willing. THERE WILL 98% NOT BE A SEX SCENE IN THIS STORY AT ALL. I AM SORRY. It's rated for language and some dark/possibly triggering content. Mentions of murder, self-harming thoughts, death, and the whatnot will be in this story. I'm sorry if it's not very good. But there are lots of good fics out there! I can recommend some if this one is icky.

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Reds Like Blood and Blues Like Sky

Chapter One: Ice-Blue Anger

The first step towards solving a problem, his counselor always said, was admitting you have one.

"Merlin Emrys is my problem," Mordred says aloud to his empty dorm room every morning. His cat, Druid, looks at him with curious eyes but says nothing, not that Mordred expects him to. Mordred's brand of crazy is less 'the animals can talk to me, wheehee' and more 'shoot you dead, you fucker, I will fucking shoot you dead.'

He neglects to share this with his therapist, who thinks he's just shy.

Fucking shy. Seriously?

The counselor is full of it, as are most of the people he's supposed to see, but he managed to get the school to allow Druid into his room as a sort of animal therapy, and Mordred is more or less grateful for that.

He doesn't wear grateful well. It's a bit too small for his pride, and it's not the kind of thing that stretches in the wash.

It doesn't make sense to him, that he should be grateful to someone he pays. Loyalty, like nearly everything else, can be bought after you inherit the huge trust funds that fall on you after the murder-suicide the paper screams about neatly knocks out both your parents.

Emrys cannot be bought. At least, so Mordred thinks. He hasn't tried, and he's desperately afraid that if he does, the one thing left pure in his life will fall over like the last domino in the stack.

They met in a class for fucking wizards, if you could believe that. Harry Potter wannabees, Mordred had supposed, and he had died laughing when one kid showed up in a full purple robe with a fucking grey beard that went down to his waist.

Mordred has a major, but he's forgotten what it is. It's probably Political Science or some shit. Generally, he takes the classes he feels like going to and skips the ones he is required to attend. Folklore 230: Real Magic from the Age of Sorcery was something that did not factor into his major, his future plans, his sex life, his inevitable time in prison, or his cat. There was really no reason to be there.

Except then Mordred found out that there was real magic, that fucking magic EXISTED, like the stories his Mum used to read to him about wizards and maidens when he was too young to read them himself and open enough to ask her to sit down and read them to him.

And in the first class, the professor said 'take a deep breath, focus the power in your inner core' and the kid next to him somehow set his desk on fire.

And he hadn't jumped or cried or fallen back. Instead, he'd laughed, pure and sharp like a sword and so bright it was almost painful to hear, and he'd looked up with eyes the color of bluebirds and Mordred thought, 'Fuck.'

Merlin. Fucking. Emrys.

As queer as a three-dollar bill, with a goofy smile and goofier ears. Bow-legged and clumsy, and always always _always_ with paint splattered haphazardly on his pants. A clever nose and smiling eyes ('When Irish eyes are smiling,' he thinks stupidly, then mentally slaps himself), cheekbones so sharp you could hold someone hostage with them.

He's so fucking INNOCENT, so much that it takes his breath away with a sort of Christmastime wonder, when maybe Santa IS real, and the reindeer ate the carrots you left for them.

He stares at him all the time, and he always tries to think of a reason for it. "I'm watching for his technique, because he's a better wizard then I am," is his tried and true excuse. This is technically true because Emrys is the best in the class, bar none, and even the professor looks startled to hell when he carelessly makes flowers sprout out of his sleeve and gives one to every kid in the class (even Mordred, a pink stock flower, and he almost shrieks when he mind immediately replies with "You will always be beautiful to me" and god he could just fucking shoot himself).

That's bullshit, though, and Mordred has absolutely no tolerance for bullshit, not even his own. The only things he can really tolerate are Emrys, his lesbian ex Morgana, and his cat.

Tolerate is a loose word with Morgana. He likes her best when she's parading around in a criminally short skirt and fuck-me pumps, and when she's smoking or eating, so he doesn't have to hear her fucking annoying voice. She hangs on to every syllable of every word, drags them out to the point of stupidity, because she thinks it makes her sound sophisticated. She attends rallies for Global Warming and the Environment, but carries around her ermine purse with the chinchilla lining whenever she can. There isn't even anything in it. Like any intelligent person who goes to school in a city, she keeps her valuables in her pockets.

She calls him 'Mormor' or 'Morling' when she wants to piss him off, and Mordred always wants to respond with something like 'Sometimes I wish we were still dating, because I could just fuck you when I didn't want to hear you talk.' He doesn't, and he's not sure why.

"Reeeeallllyyyyyy, Morling," she draws at one such encounter, her ankles crossed and a long french cigarette dangling artfully from her fingertips. "You're innnnterested in Emryssss?"

'Jesus fuck, stop talking,' he thinks, but instead says "No."

Mordred is a fucking awful liar, which is why he never lies. He has an embarrassing habit of rubbing the back of his neck every time he says something untruthful, which is why he prefers the lie-by-omission. Even now, he realizes that his hand is drifting upward and he has to awkwardly pretend to be smoothing down the collar of his black leather jacket. It doesn't fool Morgana, though. She's a crocodile in prada stilettos.

"He's sweeeeet, I guessssss. Really naiiiivvveeeee. Not your tyyyype at alllll."

"Hn," says Mordred. He doesn't really have a 'type', at least not with lovers. Apparently his type with friends is 'annoying as shit', if current company factors in.

"Pretty suuuuure he's alreeeady getting busyyyyy with Arthuuuuur, though. If you knoooow what I meeeean." She winks. Her makeup makes her look like a hooker.

Suddenly there's a flash of crippling rage, so white-hot it hurts, because how the fuck DARE she say something like that about Emrys. How the fuck DARE she. He stands up, his eyes narrowed and one hand already going for the knife slid into his boot. "He's not like that," he hisses, leaning closer to her. The smoke in his eyes makes him want to smack the cigarette out of her hand.

"Whateverrrrr," she says, blinking languidly. Mordred has never hated a single person more in his life. He's madder because he doesn't even know what to say to her-"Emrys would never go for a douchebag like your brother", or "He's so fucking PURE, you idiot, you can't even understand", or "He's too good for you, for me, for anyone", or "He has to be a virgin, nobody with a smile that big has had to deal with feeling fucked raw from the night before", or "Sometimes I wish he smiled just at me with those blue eyes", or "He's perfect", or "I really like his hands", and fuck it, these don't even make sense anymore.

"Look, Morgana, don't you have some hookers to one-up somewhere?" He's almost embarrassed by how weak it sounds.

"Haaave you evennnn taaaalked to himmm?" she hums.

'He thinks I'll always be beautiful to him,' he thinks immediately, then hates himself all the more. "Look, does it matter?" he murmurs sullenly. "Nice guys don't go for boys like me."

"That's true," Morgana says pensively, and Mordred is so relieved that she's forgotten to do her stupid voice that he doesn't respond for fear of resurrecting it. "But it doesn't mean you don't want him to try."

"I am not interested in him," he says firmly, then cusses out loud when he feels his hand on his neck.


	2. Mauve Shame

Hullo! I am pleased that those of you who reviewed liked my story, more or less. I also got feedback from some of you, which was lovely too! All of you are lovely. I hope you enjoy this part, and that your Veteran's Day festivities were fantastic, if you celebrate that holiday. Let us venture again into the unknown together!

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Reds Like Bloods and Blues Like Sky

Chapter Two: Mauve Shame

Emrys is a fucking painter.

Mordred hates painters.

He's the kind of person who wants to press a lit cigarette into the arm of a painter and say "Good luck finding a doctor to fix that up with your salary. Get a real job, asshole."

This is also something he has neglected to share with his therapist.

But like every other rule Mordred has painstakingly set up in his life, Emrys tears it down with cheery abandon and dances happily on its grave. Mordred walks in on him one time, completely by accident (shit, he's touching his neck again-FINE, it was on purpose, happy now?) as he's in one of the art classrooms. He's got paint in his hair and on his face, curving down one ear, somehow on his fucking ass. He looks like he just sat down in a pool of it and rolled around like a fucking toddler.

"Er," says Mordred, because he is fucking articulate and should become a professional diplomat.

"Oh, hullo," says Emyrs. There is yellow on his cheek. 'Sunshine,' thinks a small mortifying part of Mordred, and he feels his face going red.

"Er," he says again. Fuck, really? "S-sorry. I didn't know you were-bathing. In paint. I'll just... go. Sorry."

BATHING in PAINT? What the FUCK?!

"Oh, don't apologize," says Emrys, his eyes twinkling like they're sharing some sort of secret. "I just like to come here and get all my thoughts out. See?" He gestures to the wall.

"Those aren't thoughts. That's paint," he says flatly, and then realizes that he is achieving a new level of fuck-up in this conversation. He should get a medal.

"You're right," Emrys says, arching an eyebrow and a corner of his mouth at the same time in a motion that seems way more sexy than it has any right to. "Wow. I never realized."

"S-sorry," he says lowly, almost grinding his teeth together in his frustration. "That was stupid."

"Yes, a bit," says Emrys, grinning. "C'mere."

'He wants me to GO THERE!' he thinks shrilly, then has a moment of realization, condemns his girly subconscious to hell, and takes awkward, shuffling steps until he's standing beside Emrys, not quite touching but almost.

"Grief," Emrys says, taking his hand and pointing with it to a deep, pale purple. "Anger." Mordred's hand points to a cold, sharp blue. "Confusion" is a painful burnt orange, "Excitement" is a bubbly green, and underneath all of it is "Happiness", a bright red spread across the whole canvas like a firework.

"Wow," breathes Mordred, and he'd be happy to coexist in the space forever, with Emrys' dextrous fingers and his knowing eyes and teasing grin. It is something incredibly fragile and precious, and like all precious things, Mordred will end up smashing it and picking up the pieces with his bare hands, leaving them blood-streaked and painful. He drops Emrys' hand like it's fire (which it is, warm and encompassing and dangerous, but nothing is sexier than danger with a touch of darkness behind angel eyes).

"It's nothing special," says Emrys modestly. It has to be modest, or he's fucking high. Everything this boy touches is gold. For a sudden, he looks at his own hand, but it's still sullied. So much for that.

"You've got to be a fucking idiot," says Mordred, then clamps a hand over his mouth. WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT, MORDRED?! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?!

"I actually sort-of am one," says Emrys with insanely cheerful self-deprecation and Mordred almost cries.

"No you're not, Jesus christ, I swear I didn't mean it. You're brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and kind, and warm and oooooh, fuck." He ducks his head and pulls his hood over his face in a vain attempt to block out everything.

"Aw, you're cute," says Emrys with a cheeky grin. Mordred has NEVER been called cute, EVER. He feels vaguely dirty, like he fell in a scummy pond.

"Uh," he murmurs, face glowing. He can't decide if this is a step up from 'er', then wonders when it became a matter of keeping score. If it ever was, Emrys has completely decimated him. Taken him to the cleaners, got a discount, and poured bleach in the store clerk's face.

"Not very articulate, are you? Ah, don't get embarrassed! It's fine. Here, take a brush." He offers the coffee can to Mordred, who gingerly picks one like it's going to blow up and singe his eyebrows off. "Great! Now grab some paint and get started!"

Mordred paints for fifteen minutes, realizes suddenly that all he's been painting is a horribly infatuated shade of pink, and then drops the brush like it's Morgana's genitalia.

"Hey," says Emrys mildly. "That was my favorite brush." And NOW Mordred feels like a grade-A douche, because that was Emrys' FAVORITE BRUSH, and he DROPPED it.

"Oh my god, was it really?" he asked in a voice so tiny it couldn't have possibly come from his throat.

"Yeah, it's made of gold and diamonds and everything. And it's been blessed by Saint Thomas Becket himself. It's just a paint brush, Mordred. Don't worry so much."

Mordred feels himself going bright 'Happiness' red all the way to the roots of his hair. The fact that Emrys remembers his name is something he never dared to hope for, because he's just the angry little asshole that sits behind him in their hippie Magic class and composes sonnets about the freckles on the back of his neck. "Sorry," he says again. It isn't lost on him that he's apologized more in the last five minutes than he ever has in his whole fucking life. If that isn't pathetic.

"You're forgiven," says Emrys with an air of mock-seriousness, and Mordred nearly blurts out 'God, I want to ride you like a bicycle.' Instead, he manages an awkward twist of a smile that looks a bit like he's about to vomit.

"Well, uh, thanks. Thank you. For your forgiveness." He realizes how much he fucking fails at banter in that moment, feels his parents beyond the grave laughing hysterically at him. He only thinks of that for a few seconds, though, because Emrys leans forward, his favorite brush in hand, and gently paints a pink stripe along Mordred's nose.

Mordred shrieks at the top of his lungs.

No, that wasn't a misprint.

It's a horror-movie shriek, like he just saw someone with a stabbing knife, and Emrys looks utterly baffled. He drops the brush too, and Mordred leans down to get it, trying to at least make up slightly for his fucking freakdom.

He leans forward too much, and goes facefirst into Emrys' bony (adorable) knees. The other boy completely loses his center of balance and falls on top of Mordred in a sprawling, painful mesh of bone and white-hot embarrassment.

OKAY. THAT IS FUCKING ENOUGH.

He stands up abruptly, probably stepping on Emrys' hands in the progress, but he can't be assed to apologize now. He grabs the paintbrush, sets it on the counter, yells, "HERE IS YOUR FUCKING PAINTBRUSH, NOW TAKE IT AND PAINT SOME MORE FUCKING BRILLIANT ART. I AM GOING TO GO SEE MY CAT AND TALK TO HIM, AND HE WON'T TALK BACK BUT IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER, SO GOOD DAY TO YOU."

That prediction is the one thing in his life that goes as planned.


	3. Yellow-Green Hope

Thank you very muchly to those of you who reviewed! You are very kind and I love you.

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Reds Like Blood and Blues Like Sky

Chapter Three: Yellow-Green Hope

For some reason, he can't sleep that night.

Hah. "For some reason". What a fucking joke.

He ends up pacing around his room, finds it stifling, moves to the lobby, finds it stifling, moves to the roof, finds it overwhelming, and eventually ends up in the laundry room, lying on the floor and trying to find constellations in the holes dotting the ceiling.

'This one looks like a joint. So does that one. Fuck, this is like Woodstock.'

It says something about him that he's too considerate to wake up his cat so he can have someone to curl up with, so he's on the laundry room floor finding marijuana in the ceiling. 'Fuck this shit,' he thinks tiredly, and goes for a walk.

There are too many stars in the sky, and it looks like a badly-organized mess from a four year old that went to town with the glitter in the craft drawer. He likes to walk along the edges of walls, savors the teetering feeling of dread in his stomach when he almost leans too far off one side.

'I could bash my fucking brains out on the concrete,' he thinks, and is inordinately pleased by the thought.

He runs into some punk-ass kids who wear their pants so low you can see the crack of their asses, spray-painting 'Fuck the police motherfucking assholes'. Two of the words are inappropriately separated, and every word has a unique misspelling. 'Clever.'

He decides to give them a friendly welcoming to the neighborhood and manages to nearly stab one in the leg with his knife. He misses on purpose, of course, but they immediately revert to seven-year-old kids when he gives them his sneer. They take off, and he shouts after them. "WEAR A BELT. TRUST ME, YOUR ASS IS NOTHING WORTH SEEING."

It always helps to do your part in cleaning up the neighborhood.

They leave behind spray paint, a whole metric fuckton of it, in any color you can think of. He is about to just leave it there and go on when he catches a flash of bright red.

God dammit. Emrys just won't stop coming up in his head, will he?

He picks up the paint canister, rolling it around in his palm experimentally to get the feel of it. It's cool and surprisingly light. It feels natural in his hand. Without thinking, he's painting.

It's a boy. A boy with tousled-no, straight hair. Longish. A gag around his mouth, because it's not like saying what you want is ever easy. Hands behind his back, because companionship isn't something solid like a stuffed animal that you can just reach for. His feet are free, so he can keep walking and walking. It doesn't mean he'll get anywhere, but if you've got a complaint, then take a fucking number. That's life.

He feels a shock of mortification when he realizes he painted the boy crying. 'I'll pretend someone else did that bit.'

It's with a flash of clarity that he realizes Emrys was right. He feels... lighter. Gentler. Something in him is stretching with the pleasant stiffness of a muscle seldom used and rediscovered. He hesitates in signing the painting, mostly because of those fucking dramatic tears, but instead scribbles a quick 'Druid' in the corner and moves on his way. He leaves the bag, because one of the idiot boys left their school ID stuck in the luggage tag, and it gives him a twisted joy to know he'll get called out on Mordred's felony. He cuts the walk short, goes straight home, and opens his fridge. There's milk in it, a tomato, some rutabagas, three bottles of vodka, and some cheese. He takes the milk (nearly full-he's lactose intolerant) and dips his finger in the top. He walks quickly over to the futon in the center of the room, where Druid is curled up, and nudges him awake.

"Hey," he murmurs, and the cat stirs blearily. "Got a treat for you." The cat sniffs around, comes across the finger, and lets out a mew of pleasure. The sandpapery feeling of his tongue is not unusual, but it makes a smile spread across Mordred's face.

He hates his smile. It's huge, and sort of dorky, and his dimples make him look like a little kid. He wears a smirk well, and his scowls are tailor-fit to his face, but he smiles as infrequently as he can. Call it a vanity, but he tries to avoid looking like a moron if at all possible. He's okay with looking like a moron around Druid, though, because Druid has never expected anything from him and is consequently never disappointed.

He's also really fluffy and nice to bury his face in, but Mordred would rather strangle himself than admit that to anyone.

Mordred and Druid grew up together. His aunt Morgause bought him for Mordred when he was eight and his parents died, because she was annoyed by his crying. The elderly couple who lived in the apartment across the hall had a house full of cats, ten at the least, and every creature in the residence seemed to constantly be horny, including the humans. The place reeked of cat pee and sex, two smells Mordred is now very talented at identifying. The old couple couldn't have kids anymore, because they were fucking ancient and probably crumbled to death the second he left the apartment two years later, but there were always enough newborn kittens ambling around to start a fucking Iditarod team. Morgause picked the smallest runt of the newest crop of kittens, probably hoping it wouldn't live long enough to annoy her, which was funny in that the exact opposite became the case. She died of a cocaine overdose when he was about fifteen (he doesn't remember his own age so well, but he knows Druid was six human years), and Mordred didn't care enough to attend her funeral.

But Druid is a different matter entirely, and Mordred's world would be drastically thrown off its axis if the silly fluffball were to die. So to some degree, it makes sense that the only actual representation of Mordred's soul that doesn't involve mass murder, swear words, or setting things on fire is signed off with his name.

Hearing the precious word from Emrys' lips feels as jarring as a tray of ice-cubes being shoved down his pants.

"Have you ever met someone named Druid?" he hears Emrys ask the shy brunette girl with the eyes that scream 'virgin', and the tacky knee-length corduroy skirts. He remembers her face from a walk at the beach he took once, a performance he never repeated since the cheerful families made him feel lonelier than ever. She mumbles something that probably doesn't matter, since Mordred can't be assed to care for a girl who wears tankini swimsuits and corduroy skirts, but he's leaning into Emrys' personal space before he can help it, drawn as always by the siren call of that voice. Before he's aware of it, he's speaking.

"Druid is my c-uh... cousin's... uh... book. Book title," he finishes lamely, going red again. "You know. A novel. About, uh... Druids. I guess. I haven't read it," he hastens to add.

"Your cousin writes books?" Emrys asks him with a vaguely fond look, the kind he gives to Druid when he hides Mordred's socks under the radiator and thinks he's being clever.

"I don't actually have a cousin," he admits awkwardly, because he knows that if Emrys catches his lying habit too many times, he'll be able to completely see through it. "Dead. But my Mom was a writer." Of cookbooks, obviously none of which were named Druid.

"You're strange," says Emrys cheerily, and Mordred dies inside a little. "But I'm talking about an artist. He painted graffiti near the intersection of 44 and Calico. Have you seen it?"

Mordred's heart, which was lying dead as a frozen dog in winter, suddenly throbs back to life with the sort of aggressively painful embarrassment that is quickly becoming the norm in his life. "The-no. Can't say that I have. Seen it, I mean. Why? Is it...worth seeing?"

For once, Emrys seems too preoccupied to notice his clumsy fumbling. His eyes are unfocused, almost dreamy, and a smile is playing about his lips. "Oh, is it ever."

Mordred is suddenly grinning ear to ear like a pansy and he ducks his head behind "The Rise and Fall of British Magic: From Wands to Dragons to Modern Mishaps" so nobody can see it.

"Oh, yeah?" Mordred asks quietly, biting his tongue so hard it bleeds a bit to keep from whooping.

"Absolutely," hums Emrys distractedly. He seems too wrapped-up in his own thoughts to actually talk to Mordred, more like he's talking through him, but listening to Emrys' voice and being able to look on his profile without shame makes him feel somehow at peace. "I've never seen anything like it. The technique isn't that great, but the passion behind it is just... incredible."

"How would he, uh... have to fix his technique?" asks Mordred casually and smoothly, but apparently his casual smoothness is absolutely not on the mark, because Emrys shoots him a bewildered look. Luckily, before Mordred has to start lying his fucking head off (and consequently molesting his neck), Gaius strolls into the room with the sort of old-person energy that commands respect and attention from everyone (except Mordred, since he views authority figures as sort-of like prefaces in books-rambly, frustrating, and mostly pointless, since if you just skip around them entirely, you can get to the good bits). Emrys immediately turns to face him, letting Mordred sink low into his seat, where he hopes that fucking Satan will pop off and drag him to hell before someone notices his red face.

He doesn't. The only consolation is that Morgana, who is T.A.-ing the class, barely counts as a human anyway.

But the way Emrys looked when he thought about Mordred's art is something that stays with him in a small, tucked-away corner of his heart, buzzing and glowing faintly with marvelous gold light. He isn't aware that he planned it, but he's out the next night, feeling a rush under his skin that he hasn't felt in years. It's magic, he realizes-and Mordred's been behind in Gaius's class up until now, afraid to try in case he failed.

Ugh. 'Afraid'. It's an embarrassing word to apply to himself, the kid who once downed a bottle of pills to see if he could take it and spent the night hurling, the kid who sprints across the road when cars are speeding on it just for the heady feeling of death's fingertips reaching for his arm, the kid who taunts and insults with the secret hope that, just once, the other kid will pull a gun on him.

He lives for feeling alive, and for Druid, but mostly for the sort of blissed-out high that adrenaline can give you, and, unlike everything single fucking thing else, it doesn't do you a favor with the intention of fucking you over. Mordred isn't scared of things, he's never scared, but god damnit, the thought of him realizing that he could be part of something special, and secret, and good, and knowing that it could just be a big mistake and he wouldn't belong there either was nearly impossible to stomach.

But he can feel his magic now, a pulse thrumming through his whole body like the city's heartbeat, almost dizzying in its intensity. The pavement around his feet blackens slightly, flowers spring from between the cracks where his feet touch dirt, street lights flicker, and he feels so fucking alive he could cry.

He laughs instead. God, if he'd known he could feel like this...

He's walking along a block lined by a big, concrete wall, and on impulse, he rests his fingertips on it. Lines of gold extend from them, creating jagged stripes all along the wall.

He's painting it, he realizes with a startling burst of clarity. With his magic.

He laughs out loud again, painting a sharp streak of lightning with one bold stroke. God, if he knew at eight that he could do this, that he could be this-this incredible, divine being with color and light streaming out of his hands- If he had known-

Well. No use wondering.

But he's living now, here, in this moment, with magic burning so hot in his blood it's painful. He will learn later that his magic is like that-volatile and biting, untameable and stubborn. It may be the death of him someday, he will begin to think, and it may prove true; trust Mordred to take self-destructive to the level where his own body is at war with itself. But now, under the charcoal night sky, he breathes in the air sharper than a knife and feels absolutely fucking invincible.


	4. Sienna Delirium

Sorry for the missed update last week. Finals coming up. Enjoy this chapter, please!

Reds Like Blood and Blues Like Sky

Chapter Four: Sienna Delirium

The next morning he's hung over as balls.

"I DIDN'T EVEN FUCKING _DRINK_," Mordred shrieks to Druid between heaving into the toilet. "HOW THE FUCK IS THAT FAIR?!"

Apparently, his magic REALLY disagrees with him. It resists when he pulls and snaps with bared teeth when he extends a hand. And apparently it's REALLY good at simulating hangovers without the blissful slide into oblivion that accompanies two liters of vodka while watching poorly-made French art films from the sixties. He skips all his classes, and breakfast, and getting the mail. He vaguely considers skipping breathing, but he doesn't have the energy and instead spends the morning curled in a ball, hugging his toilet brush to his chest like a stuffed animal and moaning.

Someone knocks on the door, and Mordred ignores them. They knock again, and Mordred barks, "WHAT?" When they pound on the door this time, it's a barrage of quick, persistent knocks that has the ill boy on the floor grinding his teeth together. "Fine, have it your way," he grouses sullenly, and with a quick flick of his deft fingertips, slides the bolt across the door to open it. Immediately, the magic in him revolts with a new fervor, and he's back to throwing up with his hands clutching the porcelain puke-holder. He's vaguely aware of the other body in his house (not 'home', never 'home'), but he's too preoccupied with his own bodily functions to give a rat's ass.

Unless the person has come to steal his cat, in which case he WILL taste blood.

Or his plasma T.V. But mostly his cat.

But he can't even make himself look up until there's a hand on the back of his neck, tender and careful, thin pianist's fingers circling him like something worth holding on to. Then there are whispered words, exotic and old, and suddenly the nausea ebbs away and the throbbing in his head meekly subsides until Mordred is limp with relief against the bathroom tile.

He manages to look up and see Emrys's too blue eyes on him. Of fucking course.

"Why the fuck are you in my house?" he rasps, but he feels vaguely like he's floating. Something in the back of his mind rails furiously against the calm, screaming at him that Emrys drugged him, but he feels too dazed to care.

"I was supposed to bring your classwork," he murmurs softly. "I heard you were feeling sick."

"Well, I was. Nicely fucking deduced," Mordred mutters drowsily, staring up at Emrys's nose. It's a bit big, but it's cutely big. He's just so damn cute, all the time. It's really annoying.

Emrys smiles slightly, almost in spite of himself, but it disappears. "My God, Mordred. I had no idea... where did you get this sort of power?"

"My toes," he hums, wiggling them. "They carry me everywhere."

A laugh is startled out of him, and Mordred pats himself on the back-literally. "No, Mordred, not your toes. I mean-the sheer force of it all. I can feel it in the air, and it's agitated as heck, but it's all over. It's in this room, in your whole apartment-it's basically seeped into your carpet. And more keeps coming. God, Mordred, you couldn't even lift a spoon in class last week!"

"It was stupid," he mumbles around a yawn, blinking up at Emrys with difficulty. He keeps going cross-eyed, but it's a bit enjoyable. The whole world looks like a badly-made 3D film, and two Emrys-faces stare down at him with amusement and concern warring in their brows. Mordred decides that this is what heaven looks like. "Why would I want to lift a spoon? Could do that with my hand. Insulting. Didn't even try."

"And what could you do if you wanted to?" asks Emrys. Mordred is too high off whatever grade-A shit Emrys gave him to recognize the look of fascination on the other man's face.

"Anything. I am a God," Mordred whispers, and then throws up on Emrys's sneakers.

He must have blacked out or something, because he comes to afterwards, draped over the arm of his ratty couch like a soggy tarp. "Fuuuuck," he groans, a headache pulsing from behind his eyes, and he hears a soft chuckle beside him.

"Yeah, that's probably a good amalgamation of how you're feeling."

He manages to crack open an eye and Emrys is beside him, wearing skinny jeans that hug his ass and a ridiculous neck-scarf. Nobody should make a neck scarf look so fuckable, but Emrys could put it over his head like a fucking babushka and Mordred would still fall all over himself to pay for his dinner.

"Did I just...?"

"Barf on me? Yeah. It was gross, but magic does have its uses. Besides lifting spoons." Mordred's ears go red, and he scowls.

"You aren't allowed to tease me after you drug me," he grumbles, and Emrys seems adequately chastened.

"I was trying to help," he entreats, opening his spindly hands palm-upwards (Mordred has to quash the bizarre urge to plant a kiss in the center of his hand) in supplication. "I had to channel your magic out productively, so it didn't keep fighting against you. Funneling it out apparently made you a bit...loopy."

"Fat lot of good that did anyway," Mordred sulks, curling further into himself. "I still threw up on you."

"You did," said Emrys pensively, and when Mordred risks a glance upward, Emrys is chewing absently on his knuckle like he's starring in a scene from a low-budget porno.

"Stop molesting your finger." For some reason, his words are making alarm bells go off in his own head, but he's too exhausted to care. "And stop looking pensive. I threw up on your lap. You should be furious."

"You shouldn't have thrown up, is the thing," Emrys says, finally meeting his eyes with absolute seriousness in his expression. "I was keeping your nausea down with my magic. But you still managed to overpower me by will alone."

"It just means I'm a shithead." Mordred absently lifts a hand to brush his dark curls out of his eyes, and Emrys seems incapable of tearing his eyes away from his hand as he moves.

"No. It means you're powerful. Incredibly powerful."

"Is there actually a difference?" he asks with a twisted sort of grin, and for once Emrys seems to be rendered speechless. It's a good look on him. He starts blathering haltingly about justice and duty and Mordred just laughs, throwing his head back all the way on the couch. He still feels the vague dizziness thrumming and coloring everything he can see.

"I'm still drunk on magic," he announces, and Emrys is started out of his monologuing.

"Y-yeah?"

"Yeah," Mordred hums, taking Emrys's hand and placing a gentle kiss on the back of it. Emrys goes red, completely fucking red, and it's also a good look on him. He's only now realizing that everything is a good look on Emrys, and it's a bit insulting how long it took for him to come to that conclusion.

"You're not going to remember a single bit of this when you wake up tomorrow, are you?" Emrys's tone is blatantly accusing, and Mordred flashes him a brilliant grin, uninhibited and childishly sweet. He treasures the amazed look on Emrys's face, like his whole world has been poleaxed by the damaged boy in the wrinkled black jeans.

"Not a damn thing," he says, and promptly goes unconscious.


	5. Slate-Grey Aggression

Morgana will be redeemed soon, I promise.

Reds Like Blood and Blues Like Sky

Chapter Five: Slate-Grey Aggression

He wakes up that night at half-past seven. His entire day is just a black hole of vomit and groaning, and a strange vision of Emrys's face looking enraptured with blown pupils and parted lips. He decides he's never going to do magic again, and gets up to go buy some food. The possibility that he'll just throw it up again looms on the horizon, but he's incredibly masochistic and just grabs his wallet from the hollowed-out Bible he stores it in (it sits there most of the day, kept company by a switchblade, anti-depressants Mordred refuses to use on principle, a Hello Kitty sticker a little blonde girl in his therapist's office gave to him because it was his birthday, a pack of emergency cigarettes, his mother's engagement ring, and a collection of old lotto tickets). He ends up parked at Della's, a cheap fast food place with a dancing burger on the sign. Mordred's typical black mood lifts slightly when he sees Morgana behind the counter.

"Hey, gorgeous," he purrs. "Can I have fries with that?"

"Jackass," she growls, and he laughs his fucking head off.

"Seriously, though, get me some french fries before I tell the manager that you offered to grind against me in lieu of a meal."

Morgana raises her tortoiseshell sunglasses to give him her most practiced critical look. "Do you think he would believe you?"

"Has he MET you?" he counters, and Morgana groans, ringing up his order as a Double Bacon Cheeseburger combo with onion rings and a side of oyster skins.

"I said french fries, you bimbo."

"I know. But this is the most expensive thing on the menu," she says with a saccharine smile.

"Fine," says Mordred with equal tenderness, chucking her chin. "I'm proud to be indirectly possible for buying you condoms so you don't spread your vile seed to the new generation."

"At least someone wants to sleep with me," she says affectionately, pressing a finger to his lips.

"At least I'm not sloppy seconds to the entire marching band," he purrs, nuzzling her finger.

Their relationship is odd, to say the least. At the end of their last sexcapade, she had rolled over in bed, completely naked, and announced that she was only sexually and romantically attracted to women. Mordred had pulled the covers down so he could look at her, pointed out that he wasn't a woman. She had agreed, he'd thrown a pillow at her, and that was that. Somehow that has evolved into frequent games of emotional chicken, where the two of them try to out-awkward the other with fake affection. So far, neither of them has ever backed down.

This strange moment gets even fucking stranger when Emrys and some blonde Adonis of a man come in bickering like a married couple wearing MATCHING FUCKING WRISTBANDS.

How fucking charming. How motherfucking charming.

The blonde stops short when he sees Mordred and Morgana in their faux-intimate embrace and a smirk curls his lips. "Oh, Morgana. Didn't know you were... busy." He manages to lace the word with enough innuendo to kill a priest. Mordred hates him already. Emrys turns, meets Mordred's eyes, and lets out an undignified squeak. He drops his coffee cup, which splatters all over Arthur's clothes, and Mordred laughs out loud.

"Can't hurt that ensemble," Morgana says archly.

"Now, now, Fay," Mordred says, using the rare nickname he saves for when he's pleased with her (and hell is he pleased with her right now). "Abercrombie and Fitch is a fabulous place to buy manly polos. I like the pink stripes." Morgana cheers, and they slap a high-five. Emrys looks distinctly ruffled and Blondie just scowls.

"Hilarious," he drawls. "I'll be in the bathroom."

"Wanking to pictures of douchey boys in argyle from the J. C. Penny catalogue," Morgana says under her breath. Mordred could fucking kiss her.

In a way that doesn't involve getting next to her mouth, because really.

Emrys seems ill at ease for some reason, his eyes uncertain and hovering around Mordred and Morgana. "Sorry if Arthur and I... erm."

"Whaa?" says Mordred intelligently. Just seeing Emrys's cute little frown has rendered him stupid. It would have been insulting if he wasn't so mired in his own pitiful devotion at this point.

"Interrupted...?" questions Emrys in an unusually timid voice. For some reason, he looks like a lot hinges on this answer. Mordred blames it on prolonged exposure to Morgana's face damaging his vision.

"Interrupted what?"

"Mordred, darling," Morgana says with a sigh. Mordred shoots off a silent prayer to her manager for forbidding her to use her annoying drawl on the premises. "He's referring to the steamy sex we had on top of the counter that he just flounced in on with my ponce of a brother."

"Euch!" Mordred yelps, then immediately feels bad. "I mean, not that I HAVEN'T enjoyed it when we slept together. Because you were...ARE, I meant are... uh... attractive. Or something. But GOD, no. That would be disgusting. In a flattering way."

"Oh, no need to be shy, Mormor," Morgana purrs, wrapping her arms around him like a spider. "Merlin doesn't mind. I'm sure he'd like to see you and I getting... comfortable. Would you like to watch, darling?"

Mordred is absolutely fucking frozen in a moment of terror. This can NOT be happening.

"WHAT?!" shrieks Mordred. He frantically slaps one of her braceleted hands away from his crotch. "WHAT THE FUCKING MOTHERFUCKING DOG-FUCKER, MORGANA?!" His voice has rocketed up several octaves, and he's not even sure if humans can hear it any longer. Emrys's face is wide-eyed and flat-out disbelieving.

"Don't be shy, baby," she purrs, pinning Mordred against the countertop. "Merlin knows now."

"GET OFF ME, YOU FREAK! I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL RIP OFF YOUR HAND AND JAM IT UP YOUR PRIVATES!"

"Ooh, baby, I love it when you get all kinky like that."

"What the fuck are you DOING?!" he hisses with the sort of desperate panic reserved for when your lesbian ex is pinning you down in front of the man you've been obsessing over for weeks, and she's wearing the uniform of a fast-food joint. She's hovering over him, with her thick curtain of dark hair obscuring both of their faces.

"Mucking up your love life, Princess," she murmurs, giving him a wicked grin. "My baby brother called dibs. Too bad, so sad."

"Emrys," Mordred struggles to call, but he glimpses through the light filtering through Morgana's hair that Emrys has left. "God DAMMIT, Morgana," he snarls, and flips her over.

"Oh, are you taking control, darling?" Mordred responds by taking a bowl filled with pickles and pouring them down her bra. Her scream could break glass.

"This is a DESIGNER bra, you great idiot," she screeches, her eyes inflamed.

"Well, I bet you wish you had boobs to put in it," he growls, reaching for the ketchup. She struggles, but he manages to squirt most of the bottle down her shirt as well. Her white uniform makes her look like she's been stabbed.

"Better than being fucking ball-less," Morgana snaps, grappling for the mustard. Mordred tries to pin her arm down, but she manages to grab the tube. His grip around her wrist makes the squirting go slightly wide, and now he's got a stripe of yellow across the bridge of his nose.

"Fucking bitch," he hisses, trying to avoid another spray of mustard. He fails utterly, and he's pretty sure some is in his eyes, if the burning is anything to judge by. "I can't believe I was fucking getting along with you."

"I can't believe you ever thought you had a chance with Merlin," she shoots back. She means it to be cruel, and it is, unimaginably so.

"Oh, that is fucking IT!" Mordred yells, and his hand goes down the side of his boot to grab his knife. He pulls it out with a deft twist of his wrist and slams it down, embedding it into the counter a scant centimeter from Morgana's left ear.

The restaurant door opens with a cheerful jingle, and Emrys stands in the doorway. "Sorry. I just went to my car for-"

Mordred doesn't think the silence can get any more awkward until Morgana reaches down her cleavage and offers Emrys a pickle.

Not surprisingly, Emrys declines, and Mordred is more than a little ready to die now.


End file.
